


and i come (still disobedient, still happy)

by perpetualskies



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Keith's childhood home, M/M, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Shiro (Voltron) had ONE job, domestic Saturdays, followed by, mentions of Shiro's illness, mentions of past shiro/adam, no reposting to other sites, tender Garrison domesticity, tender desert domesticity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-04 17:16:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21201245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetualskies/pseuds/perpetualskies
Summary: Shiro hadonejob: to maybe, possiblynotfall headlessly in love with the discipline case he'd picked up from the juvenile detention centre.





	and i come (still disobedient, still happy)

**Author's Note:**

> For H., should she ever read this.
> 
> I desperately wanted to immerse myself in some Sheith softness, and then it kind of escalated—into more Sheith softness, mind you. Keith is a year three cadet and of age in this but if you’re not into Shiro dating Garrison-era Keith, this would be a good time to nope out! There’s a version of Shiro/Keith in my mind where Shiro is Stoic and Responsible(TM) and does not date Keith pre-Kerberos mission—this story is not about that version of Shiro. I also kind of follow my own loose timeline, so for example Shiro and Adam break up much longer before the Kerberos mission than in canon et al.
> 
> Title from the poem “Looking Back” by Ursula K. Le Guin. I came across it by chance, and was delighted by how much it encompassed the mood of this fic. The extended title would be: _and I come, still disobedient, still happy, home_. Constructive criticism is always appreciated. Comments are love ❤ 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

For what it’s worth, Shiro never imagined it would be like _this_, glowing and lush and sweetly straining. Mostly, that’s because imagining it would have had to be preceded by an acknowledgement of sorts, and Shiro avoided that as strategically as a rogue projectile cluster during simulation. Shiro was good at this, at not imagining things, was good at keeping his thoughts linear and focussed. He didn’t imagine how it would be to touch or be touched back. How it would feel to yearn and have that yearning answered. Least of all Shiro imagined the softness, the naked line of a shoulder blade, the way Keith’s hair would fall into his face, the way he’d sweep it back and to the side, impatient. Sometimes Shiro closed a fist around his cock and imagined anything _but_. It seemed to work just fine, until it didn’t.

Turns out, Keith wasn’t as good at not imagining. Or maybe it’s that he just never really bothered in the first place.

“Come with me to my father’s house,” Keith says one late September morning, when all they’ve done so far is kiss and have some breakfast, then kiss again. Keith’s cheek is pressed into Shiro’s shoulder, his fingers brushing lightly at the back of Shiro’s neck. Autumn swept late across Galaxy Garrison grounds this year, the air so warm it tempts you into thinking that summer may be aiming for a come back. Remembrance Day is coming up, and neither Keith nor Shiro have so far breached the subject, biding more than just time, waiting for something budding to take shape.

“How long since you’ve been out there?” Shiro asks, his fingers travelling gently up and down Keith’s back.

“A while,” Keith says and sighs, leaves it at that.

Shiro thinks: there must have been something that he did, all of those Saturday mornings, before the familiar tangle of their limbs, this pleasant tightness in his chest. He thinks there must have been training, drills, certainly Adam—he can’t recall how any of it fit together, how smooth the ridges; how malleable or yielding should you have put it to the test.

By now, there is a second toothbrush next to Shiro’s in the bathroom, a schedule of Keith’s classes pinned to Shiro’s fridge. There aren’t any pyjamas stashed in the space Shiro set aside for him in the dresser because Keith sleeps exclusively in Shiro’s T-Shirts anyway; sometimes he sleeps in Shiro’s T-Shirt _only_, slips under the duvet after turning off the lights and slowly, slowly guides his hand. But there’s a pair of socks, and boxers, and a textbook on Applied Geomatics; there’s sour candy, and the TV remote perpetually misplaced.

They’re quiet for a comfortable moment. Shiro sinks a hand into Keith’s hair, twirls lazy strands of it around. “We could take our bikes,” Keith adds eventually, turning his head and nestling his face into the crook of Shiro’s neck, “take the nice route along the canyon. Sometimes you see a jackrabbit on the way. I’m not _entirely_ sure about warm water. Might have to fix a couple of things up.”

“How long has your dad lived there?” Shiro asks softly. He doesn’t want Keith to stop talking, doesn’t want to miss a word of what it means for Keith, untethered, to look back.

“I think he bought it after finishing his training,” Keith replies. “He didn’t like the city much.”

Remembrance Day promises a rare long weekend; most of the Garrison is either going home or taking to the city for the parade. Back when Keith’s dad was still alive they’d go on a hike and watch the fireworks arch in the distant sky above the city. Back home they’d cook, and Keith remembers chicken breast and sweet potatoes, somewhere a record playing, his father humming as he moves about the room. He’d spent a lot of holidays at the fire station when his dad was working and nobody else could take him, which was on most of the occasions; but Remembrance Day had always managed to remain something special, miraculously reserved for just the two of them.

Keith circles his arms around Shiro’s shoulders, brushes his lips across the tender skin of Shiro’s neck. “Did I mention the quiet out there?” he says. “_So_ blissfully quiet; nobody to bother us for miles.”

“Nobody’s bothering us here,” Shiro replies lightly, pressing him just that little closer.

“They will, if I walk down the hall looking like that.” Like that is: his hair a mess, his lips tellingly bitten, Shiro’s old T-Shirt reaching just barely past his ass.

“You’re staying right here,” Shiro says and tightens his arms around Keith on reflex. Keith laughs, and lifts his head to meet him for a kiss.

Shiro is sure: this is how time sways in your favour, this is how matter takes its truest form. Keith shifts, his body supple against Shiro’s. Something in Shiro spikes, each of his pulse points picking up the pace. Something converges, just the way it’s meant to. The day continues slow and idle, shows no intent of hurrying them along.

“My father’s old bike is still in the garage,” Keith says. “I thought we could take a look at it. Maybe even take it for a ride.”

Shiro rolls them over, gently, without haste, then slides a hand along Keith’s side down to his thigh. It’s not like Keith has to convince him, really—if Keith wanted them to go to the centre of the exclusion zone, he’d come. But this—he knows it’s different, fragile, blooming. Keith does not talk about his father often. Doesn’t refer to any place as home.

“I’ll have to bring my tools,” Shiro says, hiking Keith's T-Shirt up and kissing a slow and careful trail across his stomach. “And _you_ will actually have to listen when I tell you to keep your hands off the brake line.”

“Out there it’s every mechanic for themselves,” Keith says and grins. “The dictate of the desert.”

It must be well past noon already. Outside, they can hear a Lieutenant running a fitness drill for year one cadets. The forecast said it’d rain eventually; Shiro has not planned on going outside either way. He plants another kiss above Keith’s hipbone, closes his eyes and pictures nothing but the sun that’s dipping low into the canyon, nothing but Keith, the sand, the creaking of the porch.

This is still new, and curiously leisured—this is them taking all the time they need. Shiro holds back a lot, sometimes to Keith’s frustration. Asks, _Are you sure?_ and _What do_ you _want_? and waits for Keith to spell it out for him. It’s not that any of Shiro’s initial concerns have lessened—Keith’s still too young, too vulnerable, too angry. Still calling too many things _bullshit_, not caring _who_, exactly, overhears. Still a cadet, and Shiro gets a headache every time he thinks about it, the possible disciplinary fallout that this could entail.

But Keith is also—_this_, slow kisses on a Saturday morning, his hips a measured drag, his fingers digging in. The cadet with the most notations in his file and the highest score in the simulator since possibly Shiro himself. Keith with his fringe too long and his temper too telling. Sitting by himself in the cafeteria. Spending every weekend at the Garrison grounds. Asking if it’s okay to stay the night, still. The tired slope of his shoulders when he falls asleep on Shiro’s couch, studying. The way he always comes to find him later in the night. Keith is—_this_, Shiro’s fingertips across his cheek, and the things they speak like promises in the half-dark; a dare, a hitch in respiration; a quiet truce, the sweetness of his breath.

Keith squirms beneath him, hooks a leg over Shiro’s shoulder, effectively aligning his crotch with Shiro’s face. Shiro looks up at him, quirks an eyebrow, runs his hand along the outside of his thigh.

“So is this a yes?” Keith asks.

“I don’t know,” says Shiro, feigning deliberation, “I was kind of looking forward to catching up on some paper work.”

Keith rolls his eyes, makes to push away, annoyed. Shiro’s face softens. He caps Keith’s knee with the palm of his hand to keep him from moving, presses a kiss to the inside of his thigh. “Yes,” he says, “of _course_, Keith. Yes. Yes.”

Keith relaxes again, letting his thighs fall apart. Looks at Shiro for a moment, then hooks his fingers into the seam of his T-Shirt and pulls it over his head. Leans back on his elbows, scrunches up his nose and asks, “What are you, like, on a reconnaissance mission down there or something?”

Shiro snorts.

It’s a late September midday tipping into early afternoon, and Shiro thinks he can hear the first stray raindrops hit the windows. Keith is moaning low, his head thrown back, his boxers bunched up at his feet. Autumn cuts through the landscape tepid, undecided. They bargained for this time together, and Shiro thinks how sweet, how sweet the payout, how tender and unhurried, how much it tastes like relief.

Shiro is content, for the most part, has learned to be, to ground himself in what he has. He’s teaching, and he’s flying, and he’s _teaching flying_. He travels, too, and sometimes even makes the news. He’s got kids coming up to him and tell him that they, too, dream of all the things that he has dreamt of, because of _him_, no less, and all the things that _he's_ achieved, and that’s the most rewarding feeling of them all. By now, the anger is residual, mostly. He’s lucky, he knows, to even get this much additional time.

Shiro doesn’t think far into the future. His doctors do, however, and what they tell him doesn’t _not_ make him want to crush something hard and painfully unyielding with his bare hands. That’s why everything figures mostly in the short-term, that’s why he knows he’s going as soon as he has heard. The admiralty is aiming for Styx and Kerberos, possibly Hydra; it's shaping up to be the farthest voyage of its kind. If he is chosen—and that’s a _big_ if, despite him passing all the medicals—he would have to leave before Keith’s graduation. And then—who knows when, and in what shape, he would be coming back.

Shiro knows too well what he’d be asking. Knows how he’d be trading in his last good couple of years. Hasn’t forgot where Adam stood on this, despite all of their time together, and how it added to the things that had already started to give way. If Keith asked him, Shiro would come, so readily it frightens him a little; but following him somewhere is not the same as staying, and having broken every record is not the same as not dreaming a little bigger still.

Keith is panting under him, hands scrambling to reach past the waistband of his sweatpants. Shiro shifts his weight onto his arms, presses his lips to his cheek, a little sloppy, and doesn’t offer any help. “You don’t have to,” he says, drags his lips across Keith’s cheek instead. Really, he’d be fine. “Keith,” he tries again, “it’s okay—”

Keith groans, exasperated. “God, Shiro, you’re so—” One of Keith’s hands makes it down the front of his briefs, and Shiro quietly _ahhs_.

Keith sinks a hand into the longer hair at the back of Shiro’s head and _tugs_, his other hand clumsily, persistently pushing at his briefs.

Kerberos and Styx, Shiro thinks absent-mindedly, possibly Hydra. All of those stars like pinpricks in the sky.

Sometimes Shiro wishes he could tell Adam. Sometimes he thinks that Adam already knows—about Keith, that is, and him. He runs into him on a date once, out with an adjunct from the Theoretical Physics department. Shiro’s chest doesn’t tighten, his smile not threatening to slip. He is happy for him, genuinely happy—reaches out his hand and says _Takashi_ warmly, doesn’t even look him up on the Garrison intranet afterwards. Sometimes they get coffee, him and Adam, and it feels like putting on a favourite worn-out pair of jeans, like getting to the last page of a photo album. Keith gets adorably worked up about it when Shiro tells him, then proclaims he doesn’t care and kisses Shiro long and hard instead.

If Adam knows, he keeps it to himself.

Shiro moves the fringe out of Keith’s eyes, leans in and brushes his lips gently against Keith’s. “Any thoughts about dinner?” he asks. He loves Keith like this, unabashed and happy, definitely _not_ hallway appropriate. Some of Keith’s fringe clings to his forehead. Shiro leans in to steal another kiss.

“You cook and I provide tactical support?” Keith suggests and grins.

“Still not sure how making sultry comments while I wash an eggplant qualifies as tactical support, but, like, sure,” Shiro says, laughing.

“See,” says Keith, grinning wider, “we make a _great_ team.”

Thing is: they do, they really do.

They cook. They eat. They do the dishes. Keith tackles a set of field problems _(You encounter a contact binary system with a period of about 0.4707 days and an estimated mass ratio of q=0.325...)_ while Shiro painstakingly works his way through a simulator update manual. Keith is wearing Shiro’s old Galaxy Garrison sweatshirt and boxers with little space shuttles on them, and rolls his eyes when Shiro yawns at 10 pm sharp but smiles and dims the lights anyway. “I’ll be right in, yeah?” he says when Shiro gets up. Shiro drops a kiss to the top of his head on his way to the bathroom and Keith keeps smiling to himself long after the door closes behind him, accidentally forgetting what a Fraunhofer line is.

They’re good at this: filling the space around each other, moving in wordlessly to have the other’s back. They’re good at building something from the ground up, slowly; at consciously giving something over into the other’s care. There are things Keith has come to know by now, all treasured, sacred bits of knowledge: how Shiro is absolutely, decidedly _not_ scared of needles, and prefers almond milk, and always sneezes twice, in quick succession. How he sometimes forgets that voice activation is a thing, and drools a little in his sleep. How at times he’s so wiped out after lectures and training that he won’t budge _at all_, but he’s always got just enough energy to pull Keith close, to press him flush against his chest and tell him just how much he missed him.

Keith knows these things, knows that they’re a commitment in their own unspoken ways. Knows to return to them in the privacy of his mind when James is, once again, being an asshat, when he sees Adam touch his hand to Shiro’s arm in the instructor’s lounge. Keith could outfly anyone in this room, this fucking building, and then some. It’s that he slowly feels he doesn’t have to anymore. It’s easy to get yourself into trouble; easier still when that is all anybody expects of you. Keith’s still quick-tempered, still disproportionally stubborn; it’s got better, though, since he realised that Shiro decidedly doesn’t care. _Steal it as many times as you want,_ he tells him right in the beginning, gives him the passcode to the garage even, _or you can just ask, and the two of us go for a ride._

They’ve gone on a lot of rides since then.

Keith just encountered a contact binary system with a period of about 0.4707 days and an estimated mass ratio of q=0.325, and all he thinks is _Shiroshiroshiro_. Tugs at the collar and smells the inside of the sweatshirt. Smiles some more.

“So,” says Shiro, comfortably pressed against Keith’s back, “your dad’s house, huh? Are you sure you don’t want a head start? To take all of the newspaper clippings of me off the walls?”

Keith kicks back at him in protest immediately. “First of all, I wasn’t born last century to still _have_ newspaper clippings, unlike _some_ people,” he retorts.

“Ouch,” says Shiro, pressing his cheek against Keith’s shoulder blade.

“Besides,” says Keith, softer, “I want us to go together.”

Shiro smiles, a warmth extending from his chest. Feels for Keith’s hand under the duvet. “We will,” he promises, their fingers intertwined.

They sleep, a billion galaxies spinning overhead.

They take their bikes, the tools, supplies and some clean towels for good measure. They set out early, only dropping by the cafeteria for coffee on their way out. They stop to watch a lizard vanish deep into a crevice. Take selfies with their aviator goggles on. There is an Arizona Ash, a tire swing, a rusty mailbox. A lot of dust that’s settled on the porch. Shiro’s fingers curling reassuringly into Keith’s shoulder. Keith falling quiet, the sun beating the heat into the ground.

Inside, they lift the sheets draped hastily over the furniture, they open all the windows and quietly take stock.

“Your house,” says Shiro standing in the middle of the living room.

“My house,” says Keith, breathing in slowly, taking it all in.

It feels too weird to sleep in Keith’s old room; feels weirder still to take his father’s bed. The sofa in the living room is not _exactly_ comfortable, but Shiro wouldn’t dream about complaining; Keith falls asleep squeezed in-between his body and the back rest, curling his fingers in his shirt. They have this to themselves, out here at least: the slowly dripping turnover of time, every square inch of acquiescence. Something so desperately wrung and moulded into shape.

Shiro’s in awe: the tantalizing brightness of the stars, all of that space they get to fill with nothing but each other. The grime, the dust, the sweat, the sand. Always the desert, nothing but the desert. Something subdued that carries in the breeze. Shiro hoisting Keith up, pressing his back against a door frame. The hover bikes still cooling in the shade. Finding him outside swearing at the irrigation. Making iced-tea with raspberries and limes.

They do not have to say: this could be us, like shutter-snaps of _something, somewhere_ down the line. They know as much already in their hearts.

Shiro tells him on the second night, without preamble. Keith’s hair tickles a little where it meets his neck. The quiet of the desert is a blanketing, comforting presence. Keith lifts his head and looks at Shiro entirely unperturbed.

“I thought you’d never fucking tell me,” he says after a moment, and Shiro looks so dumbfounded that Keith snorts and tells him it’s _okay_.

“How do you even _know_ about that?” Shiro asks, laughing, and also _slightly_ worried. “That’s—_classified_.”

“How long until the launch?” Keith asks instead. He lies back down, resting his head on Shiro’s shoulder, and hooks his fingers into the collar of his shirt, running his thumb along the seam.

“Eight months,” Shiro replies.

Eight months for: more drills, more briefings and more physicals. For convincing Flight Command that he won’t suddenly just up and _crumble_ in deep space. Eight months for: Keith, and every shifting angle of his body, his scent catching so sweetly in his sheets. How many Saturdays and Sundays, how many practised weekday mornings? How many cups of tea left steaming by the stove? How many afternoons racing each other in the desert? How many times to brush the fringe out of his eyes? Shiro had _one_ job: to maybe, possibly _not_ fall headlessly in love with the discipline case he'd picked up from the juvenile detention centre. His friend. His fucking student. And now he’s what—going to leave that kid behind?

“You’re going, Shiro. Don’t be _fucking_ stupid,” says Keith as if he’s read his mind.

Shiro had one job. Looking at Keith, like that, it settles cumbersome and raspy in his throat. What would he even _say_ to Adam? How would he even know where to begin? Somewhere he’d read that love did not consist of gazing at _each other_; and still, Shiro can’t tear his eyes away. Keith in his life is like the universe, steadily expanding. How many Saturday mornings, and only now did he start keeping count.

Keith’s fingertips trail up Shiro’s throat, the line of his jaw, press in behind his ear. A streak of moonlight is lighting up the wall behind him. Love, Shiro remembers now, means to look outward, together, in the same direction. And it just so happens that the both of them have found themselves looking at the same patch of interstellar darkness, dreaming something big into the distance in-between its brightest stars.

Keith smiles when he leans in, kissing Shiro slowly, inching himself closer, full of such heady, palpable intent. This isn’t going to be _this_ easy, both of them know that; but neither does it have to be _this_ difficult just yet.

“I hope you know you’re leaving me at _least_ two sweaters. And your Gameflux,” Keith says, pulling back for just a second.

“I do so now,” Shiro replies and laughs, the softest cadence. He pulls the blanket up over their shoulders, and quietly starts another count.

**Author's Note:**

> The quote Shiro remembers having read is by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry and goes, “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward, together, in the same direction.”
> 
> Come yell with me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/desafiar_)!


End file.
